


The Iron and the Spark

by lilacsigil



Category: Batwoman (Comic), Elementary (TV)
Genre: Background Femslash, Case Fic, Crossover, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:21:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacsigil/pseuds/lilacsigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Watson and Holmes are hired to find the missing Kate Kane, the case quickly becomes complicated and dangerous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Iron and the Spark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [forgosa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgosa/gifts).



> Thanks to K and S for beta help.

Joan watched the girl closely. Bette Kane was an extremely fit sixteen-year-old high school athlete from a very wealthy family, not an unusual sight at all, but she set off Joan's alarms. It was normal for teens to be either entirely caught up in their own lives, or to be wary of adults and alert for cues in an attempt to protect themselves. Bette did neither: she was exquisitely aware of every move Joan and Sherlock made, yet perched on the edge of the armchair with the confidence of someone who feels no fear. Except for her baby face and private school sweatshirt, she could have been someone a decade more assured. 

"I want to hire you to find a missing person. I'm coming to private detectives instead of the police because this needs to be done with absolute secrecy." Bette looked her age for a moment as she leaned forward and emphasised the last two words. 

Sherlock stuck out two fingers and spoke briskly. "On two conditions: firstly, if this missing person is engaged in conduct harmful to others we must not be constrained from notifying authorities. Secondly, if this missing person is in imminent danger of his or her life we must not be constrained from enlisting the help of whoever may be able to save him or her."

Bette thought for a moment. "Okay. Does that go for both of you?"

"Miss Watson is training at my directive," Sherlock said as if that was the end of it, but Bette kept her eyes on Joan. 

"Yes, it goes for both of us," Joan told her. She hadn't failed to notice that Sherlock had specified "conduct harmful to others" rather than "criminal conduct". He must already have some idea about Bette, though Joan wasn't sure what. 

"It's my cousin, Kate Kane. I last saw her on Friday night and it's Monday now, and we're pretty close. We talk a lot."

Sherlock gestured for her to go on.

"So I've tried her phone and her email and everything else, but she's not responding. Her dad says she hasn't been home but he's… he's kind of a privacy nut, so he's not going to go to the police or anything."

"That would be Colonel Kane, yes? Military intelligence," Sherlock explained to Joan. "You've seen how paranoid they get."

"I didn't say paranoid!" Bette argued. "He thinks Kate can take care of herself. But she doesn't just vanish for no reason. If she could've called me, she would have."

Joan had Googled Kate Kane on her phone. She was an attractive redhead socialite with a rather Gothic tendency in makeup, known mostly for public partying and stealing celebrity's girlfriends. Joan didn't even have to go past the first page to see three reported DUI charges. That was not what Joan would have considered "taking care."

"Have you checked the hospitals and morgues?" Sherlock asked Bette. Joan thought it was a harsh question to ask a sixteen-year-old, but it didn't seem to faze Bette at all. Nor did it seem to trouble Sherlock.

"There were no reports. And she didn't take her car because her licence is suspended, if you were wondering. I last saw her on Friday night. She was wearing a metallic silver dress, tall black heels with a silver strap, a big aqua bag that some former girlfriend of hers made. I wanted to go out with her, but I had a tennis match on Saturday and she said I should get some sleep."

"Do you often go to nightclubs with your cousin, Miss Kane?"

"Sometimes. She keeps an eye out for me." Bette had a very sixteen-year-old eye-roll. "The club is called Yes, she's been there before, she caught a taxi. I don't think she was meeting up with a girlfriend. I went back there to look for her yesterday but they were having some special event and I couldn't get in." 

Joan took a step closer to Bette. "Miss Kane, you said that Colonel Kane thinks Kate can look after herself. Do you think she can?"

Bette shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah. Yes, she can. Usually. But there's some weird people out there." She glanced at her watch. "I've got to get back to school. Are you going to take the case?"

"Of course," Sherlock replied before Joan could say anything. "I've got your number here and I'll call you if we have any further questions."

"Thanks." Bette smiled, briefly, then loped out. 

As the door closed behind her, Joan turned to Sherlock. "That was very strange. What's going on?"

Sherlock steepled his fingers. "Obviously, there's a great deal that Miss Kane isn't telling us, which makes it very interesting that she's come to seek help at all, wouldn't you say?"

"Yeah, she seems the type to go and sort out her own problems. How many teenagers would call the morgue? She didn't seem freaked out by it, either."

"A sensible and intelligent teenager would call the morgue."

Joan suspected he might be drawing on personal experience rather than the actual behaviour of most teenagers, but she let him go on.

"She may suspect that her cousin Kate is involved in something illegal that Bette has no way to investigate by herself – she was certain to hold both of us to my conditions."

"I checked out Kate Kane, just superficially, but it wouldn't surprise me." Joan frowned and picked up her laptop off a bookshelf. "Kate spends a lot of time partying and drinking."

"Strange that Bette would focus on 'weird people' rather than Kate's behaviour, wouldn't you say? It seems that Bette has a very high opinion of Kate." Sherlock peered over Joan's shoulder as she searched. "As does Kate's father."

"Oh, here we go. These are paparazzi photos taken Friday night outside Yes. There's Kate Kane." 

Kate's bright red hair and considerable height – she was a tall woman and the addition of very high heels put her well over six feet – made her stand out in the photographs, though the main subject seemed to be a minor celebrity posing in front of the club. Nonetheless, there were several clear shots of her standing on the steps and yelling at another photographer, and one of her entering the club, the photographer now out of shot. Sherlock leaned over and pointed at the bouncer, a broad-chested African-American man in a black suit. 

"He's the man we need to talk to. Let's go."

In the cab ride across to Manhattan, Joan researched further. "Kate was at West Point, and dismissed under the Don't Ask Don't Tell rule. Maybe she can take care of herself. She certainly looks as if she works out a lot. Same as Bette."

"Yes, it's odd that someone so dedicated to fitness chooses alcohol as a drug, wouldn't you think?" Sherlock was drumming his fingers on the armrest in some kind of rhythm discernable only to him. 

"There's that whole military drinking culture – her family has a military tradition…" Joan offered.

"Yes, and I would agree if Kate Kane was engaged with that peer group and drinking in bars with them. Instead, she's at nightclubs with –" Sherlock filled the word with remarkable venom- "Celebutantes."

Joan laughed. "If we're investigating this case we may see a few of them! I hope you can contain yourself."

"I'll do my level best." Sherlock's tone indicated nothing of the sort.

Yes was one of those clubs that might appear glamorous by night, all lit up and surrounded by beautiful people, but was distinctly shabby by day, litter and cigarette butts piled around the steps. Much to Joan's astonishment, Detective Bell was there already, standing on the steps and interviewing the bouncer from the paparazzi photos. 

"Detective Bell!" Sherlock bounded out of the taxi and up the steps. "What brings you here?"

Bell frowned. "Holmes? Did the Liangs call you in? They haven't been too co-operative with us. He's a private detective," he explained to the bouncer. "Helps us out sometimes."

The bouncer was far less impassive in person than he had appeared in the photos. "Okay. Because I've already had calls from the press and you know the Liangs don't want this getting out. They'll sue me so hard my college loans'll look like chump change." 

"My confidentiality is assured," Sherlock told him. "As is that of my colleague, Miss Watson."

Bell nodded and the bouncer seemed to take this as encouragement. 

"Yeah, it was a busy night, and Elise Liang isn't a celebrity, so she wasn't involved in all the fuss out the front. She came up the stairs here not long before midnight with a guy I thought was her boyfriend – you've talked to him, Detective, he was actually her bodyguard – but I said hi to her. She comes here most Friday nights, skips the queue. The next thing I knew, maybe an hour and a half later, the bodyguard was freaking out and we all had to search for her. I wanted to call the police but he completely refused. He had to call her family first. I guess they didn't call you guys until later."

"Yeah," Bell nodded. "Trying to keep it private has put us 48 hours behind where we should be." He turned to Sherlock and Joan. "You guys want to talk to Matthew here? Forensics have already got started on the bathroom where Elise Liang was last seen, and Detective Sawyer's talking to the club owner."

"Thanks," Joan told him, trying to sneak a sideways glance at Sherlock's face for a cue, but he was impassive. 

"I'll come to the bathroom, if only to check how badly the scene has been trampled," Sherlock told Bell. 

"Hey, don't put this on my guys! There must have been five hundred women through the place at least – they didn't close the club!" The two men disappeared into the club and Joan was left on the steps with Matthew the bouncer. She wasn't sure whether to be annoyed that Sherlock had abandoned her to handle this herself or proud that he thought she could do it. 

Taking out her phone, she brought up the pictures of Kate Kane outside the club. "Hi Matthew, I'm Joan Watson. I'm a consulting detective – normally we help the NYPD but right now we've been hired privately. I'd really appreciate if you could help us." She spoke carefully, and Matthew seemed to accept her story, supported as it was by Bell's authority.

"Sure, no problem. I've been through it all with Detective Bell but I guess you guys find different perspectives and stuff?"

Joan showed him the pictures on her phone, Kate Kane shouting at the photographer. "It appears there's some kind of altercation here. Can you tell me what happened?"

Matthew seemed a little surprised, but answered anyway. "Oh, okay, sure. That was actually about an hour before Elise got here, when the media event was on. That's Kate Kane – she's been here once or twice before – and that guy tried to upskirt her. She yelled at him then she kicked his camera right out of his hands and it smashed against the wall over there."

"Seriously?" Considering the heels Kate was wearing, Joan was impressed. 

"Yeah, seriously. I thought the guy was going to attack her but the other paps started laughing at him and he just cursed a whole lot and left. But most of those guys were gone by the time Elise got here. Actually, Kate Kane left a couple minutes after Elise went in, too."

Joan nodded. She didn't know who Elise Liang was or what had occurred, but it seemed extremely coincidental that Kate Kane had also been here and was also missing. "Can you tell me where Kate went?"

"Is she in trouble too?" Matthew shook his head. "Never mind, I guess you can't say anything. Uh, she tipped me, and I was going to get her a cab, but she walked off uptown instead. She looked pretty together, so I wasn't worried."

"And you didn't see her later, during the search for Elise Liang?" The name was tickling a memory in Joan's mind, but she couldn't Google the person that they were allegedly working for in front of Matthew. 

"No, she didn't come back." 

Joan smiled up at him. "Thanks, Matthew. I'll let you know if we need to speak with you again."

"No problem. I hope you find her okay."

Matthew led the way into the club, the dark interior leaving Joan blinking in confusion for a moment, and he headed off to a door marked Private. There were a few cops around, plus an annoyed-looking janitor banished to a corner, but Joan took a moment to bring herself up to date.

Elise Liang's disappearance had not yet made it to the news, and there wasn't nearly as much on her as there had been on Kate Kane, though a little more when Joan clicked through to tech-related articles. She was a 26-year-old MIT graduate from a wealthy family. She had made her own mark as a successful venture capitalist in various software developments and divided her time between her native New York and California. Her name popped up on a lot of "Thirty Under Thirty" lists as a savvy investor: there was no indication of her partying as Kate Kane did, or having any trouble with the law beyond a minor patent scuffle. Her Facebook page was starting to show a few comments hoping that she was okay, and Joan screencapped that in case the apparently privacy-sensitive Liangs closed it down. 

She could hear Sherlock's raised voice coming out of the women's bathroom.

"I've found your point of egress, Detective, I should think that should win me at least a few moments in which to inspect it thoroughly."

Joan headed over to see what was happening. There was another detective in the bathroom with Bell, Sherlock and the two members of the forensic team. She was a white woman with the no-nonsense haircut and flat shoes of an experienced officer. 

"You must be Joan Watson," the detective said. "Great, yet another civilian in my crime scene."

"I got the call," Bell protested, but he went unheard.

"Watson, this is Detective Sawyer and she's interfering with our investigation!" Sherlock sounded somewhere between smug and petulant. He was holding a neatly cut piece of drywall, about three feet square, and there was a corresponding hole in the wall at floor level behind him. "I found how Elise Liang was taken from this bathroom without having to go back through the club. This slab of drywall was part of some earlier renovation and leads right through to a utility room. The forensics techs didn't even try to lift it out!"

Sawyer shrugged. "So you found something first. It still doesn't explain how someone could carry Elise Liang, kicking and screaming, out of a bathroom full of women and through a hole in the wall. I've identified two club regulars who had gone into the bathroom at the time and they saw nothing."

"How do you know she was kicking and screaming?" Joan asked her.

Sawyer pointed to a deep, curved scratch about head height against a toilet door and another at the edge of the gap in the wall. "Those could be made by acrylic nails or a high heel, and they're fresh."

"The mark on the toilet door could be complete coincidence," Sherlock muttered. 

"But not the scratch on both sides of the hidden doorway that you yourself just found." Sawyer ducked through the gap and everyone followed her through. It led into a crowded utility room stacked high with boxes of glassware and cleaning supplies – the alcohol must be kept elsewhere – and there was a door to the outside. Right on the frame was another deep scratch, similar in size to the previous two. Sherlock snapped a picture of it with his camera. 

"All right, Detective, I find that convincing," he told her. "Though you haven't explained why it's your case, if Detective Bell took the call."

"I don't have time for this! Bell, deal with your civilians!" Sawyer snapped, and returned through the gap to the bathroom. 

"Serial kidnappings," Bell told them. "Attractive, wealthy young women go missing from clubs or bars and turn up alive a few days later in a dazed state with retrograde amnesia and a big dose of benzodiazepines in the system. Elise Liang will be number four in the last eight weeks."

"Do you have any idea where they're being taken?" Joan asked. If Kate Kane and Elise Liang had befallen the same fate, pre-existing evidence could make the search much easier. Then again, Kate had left the club before Elise went missing – maybe she interrupted something?

"The same place, definitely, but we're not sure where. Somewhere abandoned: there's lots of dust and dirt, some paint flakes and mould on them. Ligature marks on the wrists and ankles, duct tape residue on the face and hair. No sign of sexual assault, though, and they'd been given water and sometimes junk food, you know, vending machine type of stuff, in captivity. Whoever is taking them seems to want to keep them healthy. Except for the drugs, that is."

"Was it Rohypnol in their systems? That can cause amnesia." Joan asked Bell.

"Yeah, I think so. I'll send you over the case file, if I can get it from Sawyer."

"Thank you!" Sherlock told him, in tones that indicated something rather close to the opposite, and, with a nitrile-gloved hand, opened the door to the outside. "Come along, Watson."

The mark on the doorframe was above Joan's head height and she stopped to stare at it for a moment. Elise must have been difficult to carry away if she was struggling so hard and had her hands free, and yet no-one in the women's bathroom had reported anything. 

"Sherlock, don't you think it's strange that she was fighting hard enough to leave marks on the doorframe but no-one saw anything?"

Sherlock was surveying the scene. The door of the utility room opened right under a fire escape at the side of the building, on a narrower street. Joan couldn't imagine that it wouldn't have had people around at midnight on a Friday, though. 

"I agree, Watson. Very odd. But do you know what cases Detective Maggie Sawyer worked in Metropolis before moving here?"

"You know I don't."

"Hmm, you're right. It's useful to know detectives' special interests, in case you have a need to enlist or insult them. In Detective Sawyer's case, she worked meta human crime."

"Oh. You think that's a factor here?" A few of the cases Joan and Sherlock had worked together had involved people with meta abilities – a telekinetic safe cracker, a woman with a poisonous sting – but Joan still found it a little daunting to open up the case to such a wide range of possibilities, and generally meta humans were rare enough to be discounted as a primary route of investigation.

"If I were kidnapping a young woman, I would not take her from a bathroom full of witnesses, nor would I give her the opportunity to flail at doorways. However, the person who kidnapped Elise Liang considered these minor factors compared to security cameras, facing her bodyguard, or breaking into her presumably well-secured home."

"So they can affect several people but not cameras, they aren't willing to fight a trained bodyguard, and they can't mess with electronics. Maybe a telepath?" She recalled something she'd read earlier. "One of Elise's technological investments was a personal telepathic scrambler. If she was less subdued than the kidnapper thought, maybe that's why she was fighting – the kidnapper wasn't prepared for her to be unaffected and didn't bring anything to tie her hands. But it didn't matter, since the meta human could affect everyone else in the bathroom. No-one could help Elise."

Sherlock rubbed his temple. "I tried a scrambler once. Gave me a vile headache. I hear they're popular in the banking world, though. Well deduced, Watson: I agree with your theory entirely. Now, what does this scene tell us?"

Joan grinned at winning that praise, then narrowed her focus to examine her immediate surroundings. Many people had already walked down this sidewalk just this morning – more were grouchily shoving past Sherlock and her now – so it was doubtful that there'd be any useable evidence left on the ground. She cast her gaze over the wall and exterior of the door, then up. "There, on the bottom of the fire escape. Something's scraped against it, pretty badly."

"Indeed it has." 

Joan paced to the edge of the sidewalk. "There's a bank across the street, and a bodega. They both have external cameras. If the kidnappers backed a tall van or a small truck right up to this door so that they wouldn't be seen loading Elise in, they could have scraped the roof against the base of the fire escape. I bet Bell can track a vehicle with a big scrape on top via the traffic cameras. Maybe get some information about the van from the bank security cameras, too."

"Excellent, Watson. We shall pass the information on to Bell, and then we need to abandon this case entirely. Elise Liang is not our target: Kate Kane is."

Feeling slightly let down to have her deductive work handed on so cursorily, Joan told Sherlock the information she'd heard from Matthew the bouncer. "If Kate left a few minutes after Elise arrived, do you think she could have had something to do with the kidnapping? She could have been signalling someone that Elise was in position."

"A text message would be simpler – though perhaps Kate Kane preferred to not be at the scene of the kidnapping."

"Matthew said she walked towards that corner." Joan pointed towards the bodega. "She could be on their security cameras."

Joan reported their findings to the detectives – Sawyer was slightly more polite without Sherlock present – before hurrying across the street to the bodega. By the time she arrived, Sherlock had already talked, or more likely bribed, the elderly Chinese woman at the counter into showing him her surveillance tapes. 

"It's all digital!" he joyfully told Joan as she walked in. "This is Glenda – her son set up the system for her." 

Glenda gave Joan the familiar, slightly narrow-eyed look of "what are you doing with that white man?" but nonetheless moved over to let Joan see the footage too. The cameras weren't particularly high quality: they were in colour, though, and Kate Kane's vivid hair and bright blue bag showed up clearly, even though most of her face was obscured by large sunglasses. She walked past the store, then seemed to change her mind and come in. She bought a pack of the breath strips that were on the counter and left again. 

"Oh, her!" Glenda pointed at the screen. "She paid with a twenty, didn't take the change. Then she went down near the bank and got a taxi."

Sherlock and Joan exchanged a glance: Kate Kane had walked in front of every visible camera in the vicinity before catching that taxi. It couldn't be accidental, surely. 

Sherlock's phone beeped, and he excused himself, while Joan kept watching the security footage. It took almost another hour for a small U-Haul truck to pull up outside the club. It wedged itself in under the fire escape then had to pull forward again. Joan couldn't see the entire licence plate, but she texted the four visible digits straight to Bell. Unfortunately, the camera angle and distance meant that she couldn't see the driver's side or the rear of the van. Despite that, she was fairly sure she saw the door open and the van shake slightly as if something had been thrown in, or the roller door had been slammed down. 

"Do you mind if I copy this footage?" she asked Glenda, who shrugged. 

"I don't care what you do with it." 

Before Joan could parse exactly what kind of disapproval that was, Sherlock hurried over, waving his phone. 

"A contact managed to acquire some information about Kate Kane's credit card. It was last used to pay a taxi for a trip from here to her home."

Joan finished copying the footage onto her phone and frowned. "So everything checks out then, except that fact that she's missing."

"Thank you for your assistance, Glenda," Sherlock did his strange little half-bow, at which Glenda smiled, then escorted Joan out of the shop. 

"She liked you," Joan muttered with some jealousy. 

"I should hope so. I paid her one hundred dollars for the privilege of viewing her security records! My contact is trying to access Kate's phone records; in the meantime I recommend we adjourn to the brownstone and examine this footage in more detail."

The more Joan rewatched at the footage of Kate Kane in the bodega, the more she was sure there was something wrong. She brought up the picture of Kate yelling at the photographer and started comparing it to stills from the security camera. Bette had described what Kate was wearing very accurately – she must have either seen a picture or been with her when she was getting ready to go out. She ran over Bette's description in her mind and went through at the photos again. 

"Sherlock!" Joan jumped up and ran into the library where he was checking his email for more information on Kate Kane's credit card.

"What have you discovered?" Sherlock leapt to his feet in equal excitement. 

"It's not Kate Kane on the security cameras after leaving the club. It's Bette Kane in a wig and Kate's clothes!"

Sherlock took Joan's computer from her hands and examined the two photographs Joan had left on the screen. "You're right! It's the shoes!" 

The two pictures Joan had put up showed Kate Kane entering the club, and a still from the bodega. The two women were exactly the same height – it was simple trigonometry and basic procedure to check that – but to achieve this, Bette's heels were slightly higher, and the angle of her instep was different. It was difficult to tell, due to the metallic gleam of the fabric, but it looked as if the dress was slightly looser on Bette's shoulders, too.

"But why would she hire us to find her cousin when she knew Kate had faked leaving the club? Kate would've told her why she was doing it."

Sherlock shook his head. "Not necessarily. Bette admires Kate, and might well go along with such a scheme with minimal explanation. And there's no indication of when Kate did actually leave – perhaps she is caught up in Elise Liang's kidnapping after all. Bette didn't actually lie to us, mind you – she never said where she last saw her cousin."

"She misled us and wasted a whole morning."

Sherlock tapped his nose with his finger. "I think not. We've thoroughly investigated the scene of a crime – if not the one we thought we needed to investigate – and acquired some insight into Kate and Bette's collusion. The question that we now need to ask ourselves is why Kate Kane needed to provide herself with an alibi?"

"She's the kidnapper," Joan replied without hesitation. "And Bette doesn't know it. I had a quick look through the files that Bell sent over, and each of the women was held for three to four days before being released. That would be tonight at the absolute earliest. The women she's abducting are from her own social group – wealthy, attractive young women."

"Let's visit Bette Kane and see if she has any kind of explanation for us, shall we? We can review the casefile on the way." He sent a text message and quickly received a reply. "Bette is about to have a lunch break. We'll meet outside her school."

Joan tugged at the lapels of Sherlock's tan jacket. "Well, don't wear that to hang around a girls' school. Everyone will think you're there to abduct her."

The cabbie confirmed Joan's opinion that Sherlock resembled a seedy child molester, and he begrudgingly removed the offending garment. 

"Come on, it would be a huge pain if we got arrested," Joan told him. "Especially since Bell's busy working with Sawyer and he might take a while to bail us out."

"I do not doubt your intentions, only your fashion sense," Sherlock replied. "On the topic of Detective Sawyer, however, I made an interesting discovery. My contact still can't access Kate Kane's – or Bette Kane's – phone records, but he did uncover more of Kate credit card payments to taxis. Two to three evenings a week, she visits a particular residential building in Queens. Detective Sawyer has an apartment in that building."

"You think she's dating the cop in charge of the kidnapping case?" Joan was astonished by the audacity. "She could be getting all kinds of information out of her, and that goes double if she's a telepath or working with one. No wonder Kate wanted an alibi for Friday night." 

"I wonder where Sawyer thinks she is?" Sherlock mused, but by then they were pulling up in front of Bette's school. Bette was waiting out the front for them. 

"Hello, Bette!" Sherlock greeted her enthusiastically. "I hope you got enough sleep Friday night to play your tennis match on Saturday. You were home not long after midnight, I believe."

Bette shrugged, but she watched Sherlock and Joan closely as she did. "So now you know at least as much as I do. You must be as good as I heard you were."

"Is your cousin involved in Elise Liang's kidnapping?" Joan asked her, taking the direct approach.

"No! She would never kidnap someone! Kate helps people; she doesn't hurt them." Bette looked genuinely horrified, but then again, she'd confidently obscured critical information this morning. Joan wasn't going to take anything she said at face value.

"What, then?" Sherlock asked her. "Kate enjoys nightclubs so much that she decided to stay there?"

"You're the detectives. You work it out," Bette snapped. She turned on her heel to head back into school, but paused for a moment. "And remember that you're sworn to secrecy!"

"On certain conditions!" Sherlock called afterwards, but she had vanished into a crowd of similarly dressed young women. He sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Bette is correct, though. We've found no evidence of Kate harming anyone, or that she's in imminent danger."

"We could drop the case and tell Bell and Sawyer everything," Joan offered. It didn't seem right to keep that information from them while Elise Liang was still missing. 

"Absolutely not! Well, not without considerably more evidence. The pattern of kidnappings indicates that it's unlikely that Elise Liang's life is in danger."

Joan was prepared to argue the point – if nothing else, it was a kidnapping case, and time was critical – but at that moment Joan's phone rang. It was Detective Bell, and she put him on speaker so that Sherlock could hear too.

"Hey. Traffic cams tracked down the truck with the scrape on the top, no problem. They drove it out towards Queens. Thought they were headed for La Guardia, but they went past it. Last sighting was in Flushing and the locals are checking it out."

"Was it stolen from that area?" Sherlock asked.

"Well, it was stolen, but from Bayside earlier on the Friday night. Definitely something going on around that area. I think they damaged the truck more than you thought, though."

Joan was confused. "In what way? As far as I could tell, they'd only scraped the fire escape, nothing worse."

"The traffic cams showed a black tarp tied over the roof, and it wasn't there when the truck was driven into Manhattan from Brooklyn earlier."

"Are you able to send us footage, Detective Bell? I would appreciate the assistance."

Joan could hear Bell sigh on the phone. "Yeah, no problem. You having any luck with the casefile I sent you before?"

Sherlock held a finger up to Joan's lips and replied for both of them. "Nothing conclusive. I'll call you the very moment we have something definitive."

"Okay, sure," Bell replied and hung up.

Catching Joan's sideways glance, Sherlock raised his hands to protest his innocence. "We will!"

Back at the brownstone, Joan made herself a chicken salad for a late lunch while Sherlock sat hunched before several screens, watching the traffic cam footage over and over, peering at the black tarp on the roof of the truck.. 

"Do you want some lunch?" Joan asked, sitting down beside him to eat and watch. 

He waved it away, so Joan shrugged and kept eating with her gaze fixed to the screen. "That tarp isn't covering the fire escape damage. It's too near the front." 

"Yes, and I'm fairly certain that there's a living person under it." Sherlock pointed at a screen that showed the van turning a sharp corner. It was hard to see, but there was a lump under the matte black tarp, and instead of sliding as the van turned, Joan could see what must be a leg move and brace against the edge of the roof. 

"Oh my god, there is. Why would there be someone on top of the truck? And why under a tarp?" Joan could answer that question herself, now that she'd conceptualised it. "If they weren't under a tarp they'd be visible and the police would stop the van."

"Not to mention that it's not your average hardware store tarpaulin: see how firmly it's attached, the matte texture and the way it conforms to the person's body? That's military grade material. So we've got two possibilities: someone surreptitiously travelling on the van to discover its destination, or someone who cannot travel in the van with their comrades for some reason. I find the former more probable, at least without further information on the telepath."

Joan ate the last bite of her salad. "Metas make everything so complicated! Detective Sawyer has a lot of experience – are you sure we shouldn't talk to her?"

"I am entirely sure. The so-called "super" humans are no different to the rest of us, subject to the exact same psychological forces."

"I don't know," Joan frowned. "If I turned out to be super-strong and bulletproof, that would certainly change my behaviour. I think it would change most women."

"Yes it would, and in a predictable manner. In your case, I suspect that it would have exactly the same effect as your single stick training: increased physical confidence and willingness to confront men regardless of their physical size, only to a greater degree. In Detective Bell's case, for example, I believe it would make very little difference, though I imagine he would quite enjoy reading minds."

"Then he could battle this telepath for us."

"Indeed. Have you found anything in Detective Sawyer's abduction files indicating if Kate Kane could be their kidnapper? Or any evidence of Kate interfering with the files, perhaps?"

Joan shrugged. "The files seem clean. Kate's in the same social group as these women, which means it would be easier for her to lure them away. The first two women went missing from their homes and the third while on a run. They're all within an inch or two of my height, much shorter than Kate, and I guess she could carry me pretty easily. Then again, Elise is the only victim to be taken from such a public place, and Kate wouldn't need to do that. Elise is also the most security conscious – the only one to have a bodyguard. Maybe that made a difference?" Joan offered the theory, but it wasn't hard to imagine the tall and muscular Kate Kane taking down a bodyguard. 

"I can find no conceivable reason for Kate Kane to be kidnapping these women. There are connections between all of these women, but they're tenuous and different in every case. And why kidnap Elise unbound when we know that they are later, drugged tied and duct-taped?" He smirked. "All right, I can think of one motive. Lesbian harem."

Joan chose to ignore him and peered closely at the photos of the returned young women. "Actually, I think that's not all that happened. They've had chunks of hair chopped off with scissors as well as ripped out with the tape." 

Sherlock brightened considerably. "Hair fetishism? Much more interesting!" 

Joan's phone beeped with a text from Bell. 

"Bell says that the van was found Saturday morning, burned out in the parking lot of a synagogue in Great Neck but they've just matched it to the getaway van now. Do you think they'll be able to get anything off it?"

Instead of answering, Sherlock frantically clicked through photos on his phone until he found the pictures he'd taken in the women's bathroom this morning. "Hebrew!"

"Pardon me?"

"These aren't random scratches on the door and doorway. They're Hebrew letters. Kaf, nun, gimel, samekh, pe." He scribbled them down on paper. "No word springs to mind, though my Ancient Hebrew is poor and my Modern Hebrew all but non-existent."

"Wait, wait!" Joan put a hand over the writing. "Why on earth would Elise Liang scratch Hebrew letters on the doorframe as she was being carried away? She probably doesn't even know any! I didn't until you made me learn them for a cryptography lesson."

Sherlock paused. "All right, you may have a point. I do not doubt that these are Hebrew letters, though."

Joan wasn't as convinced, but once he'd pointed it out it was hard to see them as random scratches. "Okay, but you know who else was there and might know Hebrew letters? Kate Kane. Bette, too. They're both Jewish."

"Our entire premise that Elise Liang was conscious and fighting her kidnappers must be incorrect. She could have as easily walked out with them, under their control, or been carried without resistance."

"While Bette set up Kate's alibi – so it must have been Kate leaving a message. Is it a ransom demand? A secret code?" 

"The string of letters means nothing to me," Sherlock frowned, "They could be numbers as well: kaph, nun, gimel, samekh, pe … 20 50 3 60 80. Not a phone number."

"Does it mean anything in Hebrew?" Joan had learned the characters, but that was a long way from learning the language. 

"Not all together, no." Sherlock turned to his computer. "Perhaps something more esoteric."

"Oh wait, or something much simpler." Joan picked up the pen and wrote corresponding Roman letters next to the Hebrew ones. "K, N, G, S, P."

Sherlock looked appalled. "Hebrew and English aren't interchangeable!" 

"No, but if you're a bored kid in a weekend language school, you might use the characters of the language you're learning to write secret messages. Chinese definitely doesn't correspond to English, but my brother and I made a simple substitution code and it drove Mom crazy. She couldn't work it out." Joan laughed and wrote 蚁 on the page. "Ant for A. It's dumb but it drove Mom crazy. She couldn't work it out because she would only read the characters properly. Kate Kane doesn't live in a religious community or in Israel. I bet her Hebrew isn't fluent, but perfect for leaving a message for Bette, in English. We just have to fill in the vowels."

Sherlock pulled up Google Maps. "It could be a direction, an instruction for Bette to meet her, a message which Bette didn't receive because she couldn't get back into the club. Or a person's name, perhaps – Ken Gossup? Kane Grossepierre?"

Joan peered at the map. "Kings Park. It has to be Kings Park!"

"The abandoned psychiatric facility?" Sherlock expanded that area of the map. "I certainly agree that it is a likely place to hold a kidnap victim, but you seem very sure."

Joan pulled up the pictures of the previous kidnap victims. "They had duct tape over their mouths to keep them quiet, but that's no reason to clip their hair and stick bits of tape in it. See the pattern? There's an even number left and right."

"Electrodes."

"Old electrodes where the tape won't stick anymore. Plus Rohypnol as a sedative and muscle relaxant, followed by retrograde amnesia."

"Electroconvulsive therapy." Sherlock reached the same conclusion. "Bilateral ECT on old equipment, with stolen drugs. No wonder the women return with patchy memories." 

"Now, that's conclusive evidence. Let's call Bell and Sawyer."

Sherlock held up an imperious finger. "It may be evidence of the kidnappings, but we have made no direct connection to Kate Kane."

"Good! Then we can plead ignorance to Bette and the cops can find Elise Liang." Joan narrowed her eyes at Sherlock: he was trying to argue both sides.

Sherlock picked a side. "The evidence trail involves Kate directly: without the Hebrew characters we would have no direct link to Kings Park."

"I could have worked it out from the van location and the shaved heads?" Joan said dubiously, but she already knew what the outcome was going to be. It was too big a leap without Kate's clue. "Give me a minute to get changed."

The taxi dropped them off outside the synagogue where the van had been abandoned. The enormous brick hospital was visible from their location, though it was set back far enough behind a tall fence and great lawns as to avoid looming over the neighbourhood. If it hadn't been for the vast number of broken windows, the giant floodlights, the decaying outbuildings and the enormous Keep Out signs on the fence, the Kings Park Psychiatric Centre could have been something from a movie set, nineteenth century dandies promenading on the grounds. Instead it sent an entirely superstitious shudder along Joan's spine. She was carrying a bag with a first aid kid, a folding single stick and a great big flashlight, but it suddenly didn't seem to be enough.

"Come along, Watson! Never fear: we won't need to search the entire hospital. All we need to do is find where the kidnappers are drawing power to run their ECT machine. There's no power in the building itself, but these floodlights appear promising."

"I'm not worried about the building." Joan was trying to convince herself more than Sherlock. She'd done psych rotations as a resident – this was just an old psych hospital. "I'm worried about what we do if we find these kidnappers. They have at least one meta with them. And I'm still not convinced that Kate Kane would kidnap someone and take them here. She lives in a big place herself and has the money to buy or rent more – why risk breaking in here?"

Sherlock made a face. "I have to agree with you there: nonetheless, Kate's message clearly indicates that she was, indeed, coming here." He reached into his pocket. "On your prior concern, however, I have taken action. Here, have my telepathic scrambler."

"But we don't even know if it helped Elise Liang be resistant to the telepath! And what are you going to use?"

Sherlock waved a dismissive hand. "They muddle my thinking. I'll trust you to rescue me if needed."

Joan was even more dubious about that plan, but activated the cellphone-sized device and put it in her jeans pocket where it buzzed at the edge of her hearing. At least the mention of Elise Liang had hardened her resolve: if Joan found the building intimidating, how much worse would it be for Elise, bound and drugged?

They walked the extensive fence line until Sherlock spotted an area where the bricks had crumbled and been replaced by boards. On closer inspection, the boards were only loosely wired into place and easily removed by hand to provide an entry onto the grounds. Running quickly across the open lawn, they hurried into the shelter of the trees nearer the main building. Joan hadn't spotted any police patrols, but the signs had warned of them, and they'd been hauled up before Gregson enough times already this year. 

Under the cover of the trees, Sherlock proceeded from floodlight to floodlight, checking for damage to the heavy electrical cabling that connected one to the next. 

"Could there be a generator inside the main building?" Joan asked. 

"No-one is permitted inside because of the asbestos. It has to be somewhere accessible to the police." 

This was sounding better and better. Joan tied her scarf around her face: it would give her some protection at least. "We should try to find, then. It's got to be easier to steal enough power from a generator than from messing with the cable, especially as they'll need a good sized charge to run the machine." 

"One of the smaller concrete buildings we saw as we ran across the lawn seemed to be better maintained than the others. Perhaps we should try there."

Joan hadn't noticed that as she ran, being too worried about the telepath, the police, her footing, and the occasional random pile of trash to observe her surroundings in detail. At least if it was a concrete outbuilding it might not have asbestos, she hoped. 

Unlike the other outbuildings, this one had a newly installed steel door, locked, and properly boarded windows. There was a faint smell of gas, a muffled motor, and two thick black cords running out through a gap cut in a window board. Both the cords led directly to floodlights, and Joan sighed. "Maybe they haven't stolen power from here."

Sherlock gestured at the lock. "After you."

The lock was clean, new and well maintained, and Joan had it open in just over a minute. The generator was chugging along inside the building, and a maintenance list was pinned to a boarded-up window. There were also a few mismatched chairs with "KINGS PARK" stencilled on them, coffee cups, assorted tattered magazines and newspapers and a decrepit microwave. 

"I think we've found where the cops hang out between patrols," Joan said. The most recent newspaper was from yesterday and tucked inside it was a table of officers' names; the three columns were labelled "Teens", "Homeless" and "Ghost Hunters", along with a tally of people they'd caught on the grounds. "Homeless" and "Teens" were well in front of "Ghost Hunters". Someone had written in a fourth column, "Ghosts", and there were a few fresh tally marks there, too. "Do you think they're seeing ghosts but it's actually the telepath driving them away?" Joan asked Sherlock, who was deeply engaged in studying the generator.

"Very possible – research into the matter indicates that it's far more difficult for a telepath to cause specific hallucinations than to send the human brain haring off in the direction that makes most sense to it. An abandoned psychiatric hospital has certain associations that it would be easy to encourage."

"So when the other women in the bathroom saw Elise being taken away they probably told themselves she was sick, maybe, or something like that? With a little push to make them not pay full attention?"

"Indeed so. Of course, there are more skilled and powerful telepaths, but it's much easier for them to encourage their target to do something that they were doing anyway, as with any confidence game."

Joan was resolved: if the telepath was somehow trying to convince Joan's brain that this place was incredibly scary, well, it wasn't going to work. She had good reason to be here – although she'd rather be wearing proper protective clothing – and it was the telepath who was trespassing. 

"Here we are!" Sherlock held up a third electrical cable, which was running down into a hole in the floor, hidden from the cops' sight. 

"Should we shut off their power?" Joan didn't want to find Elise Liang strapped to a table being shocked. 

"I'd rather follow the cable to see where they are than give them warning. And at least this way we may have some light."

Joan patted her flashlight, but she had to say that the idea of ambient light was preferable to a single beam, no matter how bright. "Okay. But the second we find Kate Kane we get the hell out of here. If Elise is here, she'll need help from the cops, not us."

Sherlock nodded emphatically. "Agreed."

The inside of the hospital seemed less terrifying, or maybe that was just Joan's personal resolution to fight the emotion. It was not so different to other hospital where she'd worked, only empty, dirty and dark. Graffiti tags were everywhere, along with other signs of human habitation such as broken bottles and crack pipes, trash and the strong smell of urine. The cops didn't seem to be patrolling particularly successfully, at least not recently. Some light filtered in the tall windows – more where the dirty glass was broken – but Joan quickly needed the flashlight to illuminate their path. The electrical cable was covered in matte black rubber, making it hard to see at the best of times, and there had been some attempt to conceal it under trash, broken furniture and garbage bags. They lost it completely a few times, finding it only at the next doorway. 

When the cable turned to run down a flight of stairs to the basement level, Joan had to laugh. 

"What?" Sherlock asked, standing closer to share the bright flashlight.

"It's not just a creepy abandoned asylum, it's the basement of a creepy abandoned asylum!" 

"An effective use of local terrain for defence," Sherlock noted, but he did stick close to Joan as they walked carefully down the stairs. 

The bottom of the stairwell was cluttered with broken furniture, but Joan quickly spotted a path that had been cleared through the debris. "I think this was the way they came in!"

Two more steps took them to the basement floor. The moment they stepped off the stairwell Joan felt an excruciating pain rip through her head, some cross between an extremely loud noise and an extremely bright light. She'd only had migraines twice, but this was both of them piled up together, with a horrible stench piled on top. Staggering forward, she felt Sherlock collapse behind her, but Joan kept her feet somehow. Fighting the urge to drop the flashlight and block her ears, she managed a few more steps then fell to her knees. Somewhere she could hear Sherlock gasping, but she didn't know how, over this appalling noise. Pulling herself upright with the help of a pile of furniture, Joan dragged herself forward, determined to escape, convinced in her gut that if she stopped moving she would die. There was a wall in front of her but Joan's desperate fingers found a gap and she pushed herself through it to the other side.

The sensory overload stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Joan felt sick, her ears throbbing and vision still sparking, but now she had a moment to realise what had happened: that was a telepathic attack, a very basic technique. She'd seen the results of it before, in ER. Her friend Carrie had described it as "turning the senses up to eleven". The protocol was to treat any self-inflicted injuries that occurred during the incident then let the patient sleep it off. A quick self-check revealed minor scrapes and bruises, but nothing serious. 

It took Joan another moment to realise that she had left the flashlight on the other side of the wall, but she could see, dimly. Six fluorescent lights, out of all the rows of lights in the trash-filled room, were actually working. 

"Sherlock?" Joan called tentatively, but there was no answer. She reflexively checked her phone, but it had no signal. Brighter light gleamed through the gap in the wall, so she peered through it to see her flashlight on the ground, still operational. There was no sign of Sherlock, though the piles of broken furniture blocked any clear line of sight. She started to climb back through to retrieve her flashlight at least, but the moment her head cleared the wall the intense pain returned. Instinctively pulling away, Joan huffed in frustration. 

"I felt the same way," said a woman's voice behind her, and Joan spun around, assuming a wary stance. She instantly recognised Batwoman – the long red hair, the black and scarlet costume – and wanted to kick herself for feeling safer. She checked again, taking in the woman's height, build and colouring. 

"You're Kate Kane. It all makes sense now." To be honest, it was difficult to reconcile the hard-partying socialite with the dramatic figure in front of her

What Joan could see of Batwoman's face looked tired. "I'd appreciate it if you kept that quiet."

"Your cousin Bette has sworn us to secrecy. She didn't receive your message, but my partner and I did. Joan Watson, consulting detective."

"This entire area is surrounded by that sensory attack. Even with a telepathic scrambler it's hard to move through it and I don't want to end up stuck halfway."

"I have a scrambler too," Joan showed her, "But my partner didn't. I hope he made it up the stairs."

"If he did he can go for help. If not, he's unlikely to suffer serious harm for several hours."

"That's comforting." Joan spoke sarcastically, but glanced towards the wall where she'd come in and shuddered. She wasn't sure she could make herself go through that attack again if Sherlock wasn't in immediate danger. "Have you found Elise Liang?"

Batwoman grinned at Joan. It was unsettling. "Of course I have, and she's all right so far. Drugged, but all right. I've been working on these kidnappings for a while and I knew someone was watching Elise. She's a workaholic, though, and all she did was shuttle from her secure business premises to her secure home. She was planning to meet a group of friends at the club and that was an ideal opportunity for the kidnappers to take her, and for me to find them." She grimaced. "I wasn't entirely prepared for the meta human aspect."

"Have you seen them? Who are they?" Joan was worried: if even Batwoman hadn't been able to escape the basement of the hospital she wasn't sure what to do next. 

"It's only one kidnapper. Well, and her telepathically controlled henchmen. Homeless men, alcoholics that she probably found right here in Kings Park – they'd be no threat on their own but Omen is directing them and she's not letting them have any sense of self-preservation. I've fought telepathically controlled men before and it's very difficult to neutralise them without seriously hurting them." She pressed her lips together. "I'm not prepared to beat up sick old men unless there's no other way to save Elise."

Joan thought of ER patients she'd seen, high on meth or crack and feeling immortal despite major injuries. "So the men aren't here voluntarily? Is, uh, Omen still giving them alcohol?"

"Yes. It looks like they robbed a store during the last abduction. Why?"

"Damn. I was hoping that if she didn't keep up the alcohol their bodies wouldn't cope no matter how much she tried to control them. If you didn't have to go through them, then we could stop the sensory attack barrier, maybe."

"She probably discovered that already. This is her fourth attempt to find someone suitable. Come and see what she's doing."

"Okay," Joan replied, dubiously, "What's that?"

"Bodyswap." Batwoman seemed to think this required no further explanation and moved off into a cluttered hallway. 

Joan sighed and followed, picking her way more carefully. At least this Omen woman and her helpless henchmen used this path frequently: it was much tidier than the floor above. Not many lights were operational, but now that Joan's eyes had quickly adjusted to the gloom it was enough. The graffiti was less frequent down here, but Joan could hear rats in the walls and saw one run fearlessly across the corridor less than six inches from her feet. She flinched automatically, but sternly told herself that the noise of the rats would cover any noise she and Batwoman made. Batwoman might have a mask to hide any fear, but Joan had a lot of practice, from medical exams to lunch with Moriarty.

Batwoman led her to a rusty steel door that had a small, reinforced glass observation window in it. Joan could hear women's voices now, and the smell of urine, both fresh and stale, was strong in the corridor. Standing on her tiptoes, she peered into the observation window. 

She wasn't sure what she had expected, but a pair of dirty, overstuffed armchairs wasn't it. Elise Liang, drowsy and badly dehydrated, was sitting in one of the chairs, not restrained in any way. Six men, all dressed in layers of ill-fitting, dirty clothing, sat around the armchairs, slowly passing around a bottle of lemon-flavoured vodka, completely wordless. All of them were solidly-built older men, long-term alcoholics to Joan's trained eye, and they all looked worse than Elise did. More than that, they passed the bottle with robotic regularity, a precision that should be beyond their trembling, damaged hands. 

A shaky voice came from the other chair. If Joan had to place it, she'd say it belonged to a young woman, perhaps a teenager. "Your brother's wife is named Xiao Li, also known as Hannah. Your secretary's name is Rafael Martino." 

"Xiao Li." Elise corrected the pronunciation. Her voice was slow and weary. 

Joan peered around the room, taking in as much of it as she could see. There was an ECT machine and a bench with straps off to the side, the machine's display lit up. It certainly seemed operational. She glanced at Elise again: her hair had not yet been cut. 

Stepping away from the window, she grabbed Batwoman's arm and hissed, "What's going on?"

They moved away from the door but kept their voices low. 

"Omen is interrogating Elise, both verbally and telepathically. I've been listening for the past few days: it seems that Omen is dying and wants to take over someone else's body to survive."

"Can she do that? If she's dying why doesn't she just do it now? And what's she dying of?"

"I don't know if it's possible, but Omen certainly thinks it is, with the help of the ECT machine. Many telepathic abilities are affected by electricity, so it's not completely ridiculous. I mean, that's how Elise's telepathic scrambler works. The last three women didn't 'take', but she thinks Elise is a better match, and she's spending time getting in sync with her. When she tries to swap bodies with Elise, she'll be vulnerable and I'll take her down then."

"Wait, you're going to let her shock Elise?" Joan was appalled. 

"It didn't kill any of the other women and there's nothing in Elise's medical history indicating she'll be particularly vulnerable, so in the worst case scenario, yes."

"Can't we just make our way out and disconnect the power?" Joan had really hoped Sherlock would do that already, but there was no sign of it. Maybe he was still caught in the sensory attack barrier.

"If you think you can make it through the barrier." Batwoman shrugged. "I haven't yet, and she's got to be due to attempt her bodyswap any time now. I was down here when I heard you stumble in."

Joan spotted a useful piece of steel rebar on the floor. She weighed it in her hand: on the heavy side, but usable in a fight. Batwoman seemed pleased at Joan arming herself, returning to the observation window, but Joan felt even more worried. Elise Liang didn't look particularly well, and subjecting her to a major electrical shock seemed like an unnecessary risk. 

Omen was running through a list of passwords and bank account numbers, and Joan waited beside Batwoman, changing places at the observation window. It was Joan at the window when Omen slowly arose from her chair and moved towards the ECT table. She was obviously unwell: she had none of the healthy muscle tone of a girl her late teens; her skin was chalk-white and her hair fallen out in clumps; her movements slow and uncoordinated. Even the walk from the chair to the ECT table seemed to be an effort. Joan watched with interest, then with alarm as Omen picked up a pair of scissors and a roll of duct tape.

"She's preparing Elise now!" Joan whispered, putting down the rebar and moving over a little so they could both see, with their heads pressed together. Batwoman flexed her hands, ready for a fight. 

Elise picked up two blue tablets from the arm of her chair and swallowed them dry before she got to her feet and wobbled over to the ECT table. It took her a few attempts to climb on, as it was set far too high for her, but Joan could see what Batwoman meant about telepathic control causing someone to lose their ability to take care of themselves. Elise scraped her knee and broke a fingernail as she awkwardly climbed onto the table, but she didn't flinch or try to tend to the minor injuries. 

Elise lay down on her back and Omen began to duct tape her hands and feet to the table. The six men seemed to feel compelled – were compelled – to stay close to Omen, though they were no help to her. 

As Omen put another strip of tape across Elise's chest, Joan poked Batwoman in the arm. "Elise's breathing is too shallow. She shouldn't be in a supine position. And she definitely shouldn't be subjected to ECT."

"We can't go in. Omen is still in control."

Omen put tape across Elise's mouth, carefully winding it in the middle to shove between Elise's teeth to prevent them clashing when the shock came. Joan suspected Omen had experienced ECT herself: she was certainly aware of the procedures, if not actual safety measures or appropriate medical care. Joan watched Elise in an agony of indecision: she didn't know what drugs Elise had been given, but her respiration was certainly slower and shallower than it should be. Benzodiazepines alone would only have that effect at very high doses, but if Elise wasn't used to them, she could easily be suffering serious respiratory depression, and who knew what else she might have been given? Alcohol alone would increase the risk, and there was plenty of that lying around. 

Joan tugged Batwoman down to her level and whispered in her ear. "You've read Elise's medical records. Did she take anything sedating, maybe Valium?"

"No, nothing," Batwoman replied casually. "She may be the least medicated person in New York."

That was unacceptable, then. Perhaps the other women were more used to benzodiazepines, or perhaps Omen had upped the dose or added something else this time, but Elise was in no condition to receive ECT. Joan ducked under Batwoman's arm, shoved the door open and walked into the room. 

"Hello," Joan said in her calmest, most professional voice. "My name is Joan and I'm here to help you."

Omen shrieked in surprise and the six large men moved to form a barrier between her and Joan. 

"Where did you come from?"

"I'm a doctor." Joan thought that was an acceptable lie for the moment. "I heard you were sick and I want to help."

She felt a rough shove at her mind, much less painful than the sensory attack had been, and tried to think of being in a hospital, and staying by her rehab clients at their worst. 

"Joan Watson. You're not a doctor now," Omen sneered. 

Joan remained calm. This was simultaneously much easier and much scarier than hiding outside a door with a length of rebar. "That's right. If I were, I'd have to think of my malpractice insurance rather than coming down here to help you."

Omen moved a little closer. "I'm not sick, I'm dying."

"Can you tell me more about that?"

Omen's gaze flicked from Joan to Elise on the table, but seeing Joan remain still seemed to keep her calm. She did seem young, probably about Bette's age, and the remnants of some Gothic costume of leather and boots topped with a dirty, oversized t-shirt made her seem even younger.

"Check her for weapons!" 

One of the men trudged forward and clumsily frisked Joan, taking the telepathic scrambler and her phone. He handed them to Omen, but she didn't seem to find them particularly threatening and dropped them on the floor. 

"It must be taking a lot out of you maintaining all these telepathic links," Joan told her, keeping her voice level.

Omen shook her head, and perched on the edge of an armchair. "Nah, these guys fried their brains years ago. No trouble at all. That's not the problem."

"What is the problem?" Joan stayed outside Omen's personal space, but tried to keep eye contact. "It seems a lot of effort to swap bodies with Elise rather than go to hospital."

"No-one can help me!" Omen snarled. "See!" She ran her hand through her hair, easily pulling out a clump, then slipped the t-shirt off one scrawny, pale shoulder to display an ugly set of sutures running across her shoulder blade and almost up to her neck. If a medical professional had made those sutures they deserved to be fired: some were extremely tight, others gaping, and all large and clumsy. 

"That does look painful. I could take out the tightest stitches and re-do them, if you want."

"It won't help! My brother made me take over the minds of some other metas – not zombies like these guys – and I got hurt." She showed Joan her other shoulder, similarly injured: this time the rough sutures led under her arm instead of to her neck. "My brother fled but one of his people stitched me up. And even since then I've got weaker and weaker and soon I'll die. I had to make these guys carry me when we took Elise from the club."

Joan cast her gaze around Omen's hidey-hole. There were wrappers from candy, empty liquor bottles, a computer and assorted boxes of sedatives and painkillers, but there was no sign of real food or any way to prepare it. Joan was developing a theory, but she needed to be closer to Omen to be certain.

"If your mind goes into Elise's body, what happens to Elise's mind?" Joan cast a look at Elise on the table, drawing Omen's attention, and got a step closer to Omen. Elise was still breathing, at least, but she was lying very still.

"I don't know! It might go into my body or it might get pushed out entirely. I don't want to kill her but I don't want to die! She's got money and good looks and everything! She's had a good life!"

Joan nodded sympathetically – if Omen was planning on taking over her victim's entire life it made sense that she was choosing independently wealthy young women in good health – and moved closer again. The thought process that had led Omen from "I'm dying" to "I'll take someone else's body" was impenetrable to Joan, but she was sure that Sherlock would say it was basic psychology. Yeah, turned up to eleven. That reminded her of something.

"When I was coming here to help you, I ran into a telepathic barrier, a sensory attack. That's got to be more complex that controlling these men."

Omen smirked with pride. "Yeah, but I don't have to run it. You know those telepathic scramblers?" She pointed to the one she'd taken from Joan. "That's what it feels like if you're a telepath. All I had to do was adjust the frequency and hook it up to the old telephone wires. Instant barrier!" She pointed to the scrambler attached to wires sticking out of the wall. 

While she explained, Joan kept a close eye on Omen's gesticulating hands. The nails were in terrible condition, peeling away from their beds and turning up at the sides. Joan took another step forward and gently caught Omen's hand between hers.

"I don't think you're dying. I can't confirm it without a blood test, but I think you're severely anaemic."

Omen stared at her in shock, and in that moment Batwoman hurtled across the room, far too fast for Omen or her telepathically controlled minions to react, and ripped the scrambler free from the wires. She hurled it to the ground and crushed it with her boot heel. 

"No!" Omen shrieked and her men ran at Batwoman. She was ready for them and used the armchair as a ramp to launch herself right over their heads, landing next to Elise at the ECT table. Joan realised that she'd forgotten to check on Elise while she had been closing in on Omen, and she couldn't tell from this distance if Elise was still breathing or not. At least her lips had not yet turned cyanotic. 

By the time Batwoman had sliced through the duct tape and thrown Elise over her shoulder the mind-controlled men had blocked the escape route. She shifted position, searching for an opening in the wall of men, but carrying the barely conscious Elise was hampering her movements, and Joan knew that she was trying to avoid harming the innocent men. She was wondering what Batwoman's plan was when she realised that Batwoman was expecting her to stop Omen. Joan eyed the skinny girl, but she felt wrong hitting someone she had just diagnosed as seriously ill. 

Omen took the decision out of her hands. Pulling Joan in front of her, she grabbed the scissors she had used to cut Elise's hair and put the point to Joan's neck. 

"Put her down or I'll kill the doctor!" 

"Okay," Batwoman said in a soothing voice similar to the one Joan had been using. "I'm moving back to the table, okay?"

She was moving deliberately slowly, and it took Joan a moment to realise why she was stalling: now that the barrier was down, Sherlock would be free and calling the police. That sensory attack would certainly count as physical harm, and Joan being missing would prompt him to immediate action. Still, it would have to take more than a few minutes for the police to assemble, and even if Sherlock had got out earlier and called them, more than a few minutes to sneak through the trash-strewn basement level to this room.

As Batwoman gently placed Elise on the table, in recovery position, Joan pulled away from the scissors, but instead of getting away, dragged Omen down to the ground with her.

"Batwoman, run!" Joan yelled as the two of them sprawled on the ground, Omen on top of Joan.

Omen leapt to her feet, as Joan had hoped. There was a long moment as Omen stood perfectly still, then her eyes rolled up in her head and she collapsed down onto Joan in a faint. The six men she had been controlling slid to the ground, too.

"Postural hypotension of anaemia," Joan explained, checking Omen over. "She stood up too fast and fainted. Now, pass me that duct tape."

"Nice move." Batwoman cocked her head, listening to something outside the room. "The police are coming – they'll have a device to contain Omen. And that's my cue to leave."

"In case Maggie Sawyer shows up?" Joan couldn't resist a dig at her.

"Don't worry – I've got a lot of practice at creating alibis," Batwoman smirked, and exited the room in a swirl of black cape. 

Despite the warning that they were on the way, Joan was tremendously relieved to actually see the SWAT team and what looked like half of the Suffolk County PD take control of the scene. They bundled up Omen and sent in the paramedics.

"She's very sick! Severe anaemia! Probably due to initial blood loss with poor nutritional status!" Joan called after the SWAT team as they carried Omen away, a bulky metal helmet forced onto her head. 

As the paramedics tended to the deeply confused homeless men and to Elise, Sherlock argued his way past the cops and into the room. 

"Watson! I'm pleased but not surprised that you managed to control the situation."

Detective Bell was right behind him. "There's a compliment for you."

"Thank you," Joan replied, trying not to stare at Detective Sawyer, who had followed Bell and was checking on Elise. "Sherlock, are you all right? That sensory attack was bad enough with a telepathic scrambler in place."

Sherlock's clothes were quite rumpled and dirty, and he had a small sterile dressing on his forehead.

"I became completely disoriented, as you would expect, and couldn't find the stairs. Then I recalled my research into Tibetan meditation forms and focused my mind until I could at least rationally search for the stairs and escape. I called Detective Bell at once."

Joan brushed some of the dirt from his jacket. "Why didn't you cut the power? I mean, I suppose you didn't know that Omen was using a scrambler to create the barrier…"

Sherlock drew himself upright. "It was somewhat more basic than that. I couldn't imagine that you'd managed to maintain a hold on your flashlight and I didn't wish to leave you alone in the dark."

Bell punched him in the arm. "You're turning sentimental in your old age," but Joan smiled. 

"That was very considerate." She glanced from Sherlock's clothing to her own. Her suede boots were a disaster, and the rest of her clothes resembled something that a hipster would be proud to find in a dingy boutique. "We should definitely charge our client extra for this."

Two days later, Bette Kane showed up with a wad of cash to pay for their services. 

"You did call the police," she told them sternly. 

"Only when someone was in imminent danger." Joan had been pleased to hear that both Elise and Omen – whose real name turned out to be Lilith, of all things – were doing well in their respective hospitals, as were the men Omen had controlled. It had been a complicated situation to explain, but Detective Sawyer's experience in meta human affairs had helped. 

"I won't haggle. Thank you for helping my cousin, Miss Watson. She's very capable but sometimes she does get in over her head."

Joan smiled. "Tell her to brush up on her diagnostic skills and she'll save herself a lot of trouble."

"I'll do that." Bette headed out with a smile.

"Ready for another meta case?" Sherlock asked Joan with tremendous cheer.

"Absolutely not, and I don't want to hear another word about meta human psychology being the same as regular human psychology, either." Joan carefully divided the cash between Sherlock and herself. "They may have the same wants and needs, but they paint them on a much, much grander canvas."

"So do the rich!" Sherlock protested, and Joan threw his cash at him with great relish.


End file.
